Distance and Empathy: Constructing the Spectator of Annie Sprinkle's Post-Post Porn Modernist—Still in Search of the Ultimate Sexual Experience - Still under analysis

Sep 15, 2026

Upload by Aurora

The essay examines Annie Sprinkle’s performance “Post-Post Porn Modernist—Still in Search of the Ultimate Sexual Experience” as a provocation situated within late-20th-century debates on pornography and censorship. It analyzes how the work’s graphic, taboo staging and its narrative strategies shape spectatorial responses. Drawing on two contrasting viewings in Berlin and Chicago, the author argues that emotional and rational reactions are context-dependent and oscillate between perceived distance and responsiveness, affecting identification, empathy, and resistance.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Performance content and strategies

Context, reception, and contrasting reactions

Postmodernism, representation, and spectator distance

Meaning-making as negotiation

# Distance and Empathy:Constructing the Spectator of AnnieSprinkle's Post-POST PORN MODERNIST—Still in Search ofthe Ultimate Sexual Experience Angelika Czekay Today,after seventeen years in the porn industry,ex-sex worker AnnieSprinkle is a performance artist.In her recent performance piece "Post-Post PornModernist Still in Search of the Ultimate Sexual Experience,"Sprinkle talks abouther life as a former porn star and ex-prostitute. The show's topic is sex,which Sprinkle "understands as her hobby,politics,spiritual experience,expertise,main subject matter...and the key to her greathealth and happiness"(Program note,Theatre Oobleck,October 1991).Theperformance is visually graphic:Sprinkle urinates and douches on stages,invitesthe spectator to look at her cervix,performs a "bosom ballet,"and introduces sextoys for the fulfillment of various sexual desires.In a series of loosely linkedsegments,her narration moves through the different stages in her life and revealsits changes,both in job and attitude.To complement her stories,Sprinkle usessets of slides;for instance,the "pornstistics"[sic],showing an image of theEmpire State Building as a demonstration of the length of all the penises she"sucked,"or a diagram that reveals in percentages her reasons for becoming a sexworker. I had the opportunity to see Sprinkle's performance piece on two separateoccasions and in two different cultural contexts in 1991,once in Berlin in Julyand once in Chicago in October.Although the performance had basicallyremained the same,my reactions were almost directly opposite.As a trainedresistant feminist reader with a strong awareness of the representation of womenand the female body on stage,I found myself rejecting Sprinkle's piece afterseeing her for the first time in Berlin.I felt offended and vulnerable as a woman,and interpreted the display as serving,yet again,the male gaze only.When I sawSprinkle in Chicago,however,I felt distanced enough to look at the wholeperformance instead of singling out individual images.I thoroughly appreciated the show's subversiveness and Sprinkle's politics of representation.My differentresponses led me to consider questions of context,reception,and interpretationsince the performance texts were produced in radically different ways in eachsite.To explore these questions I will read the performance contexts and myown responses intertextually. Situated in the center of the current highly controversial discussions around"pornography"and censorship,Sprinkle's performance evokes strong spectatorialresponses because it displays blatant and—for the genre of performance art—culturally taboo images of the female body!These responses,I am proposinghere,are both emotional and rational,and "happen"both consciously andunconsciously,voluntarily and involuntarily. Through foregrounding the politics of representation,postmodernperformance theoretically invites the spectator to identify with a position ratherthan a character,seemingly bypassing involuntary emotional identification.AsLinda Hutcheon says:"postmodernism's initial concern [is]...tode-naturalize...;to point out that those entities that we unthinkingly experienceas 'natural’...are in fact 'cultural'"(2).Postmodernism then points torepresentation itself while acknowledging the traditional history of representationas ideologically circumscribed instead of as natural,true,or real."A study ofrepresentation,"Hutcheon says,"becomes not a study of mimetic mirroring orsubjective projecting,but an exploration of the way in which narratives andimages structure how we see ourselves and how we construct our notions of self,in the present and in the past"(7).In effect,the postmodern production tries toprovoke the spectator into resisting unconscious psychological identification.Spectatorial pleasure ostensibly is evoked through the creation of distance fromthe narrative or characters on stage.Instead,I suggest that any distance evokedis always inevitably linked to a sponta

FAQs

What is the focus of the essay regarding Annie Sprinkle’s performance?

The essay focuses on how spectators’ emotional and rational responses are produced and shaped by the performance’s strategies and the cultural contexts in which it is received.

How do the author’s reactions differ between Berlin and Chicago performances?

In Berlin, the author felt offended and vulnerable, interpreting the display as reinforcing the male gaze; in Chicago, she felt distanced enough to view the performance as a whole and appreciated its subversiveness and politics of representation.

According to the essay, how is spectatorial distance connected to emotional response?

Spectatorial pleasure is argued to stem from an oscillation between distance and responsiveness, meaning resistance and identification can be conscious, intuitive, or both.

Sep 15, 2026

Upload by Aurora